China’s state media are struggling and censors are working overtime as Beijing gropes for a coherent narrative in the wake of the sudden reversal of its hallmark “zero COVID” policy.
For years, the country’s propaganda apparatus hailed the policy as proof of the superiority of the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule and the wisdom of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Now its usual mouthpieces have been left to spin the decision to scrap strict travel curbs, quarantines and snap lockdowns as a victory, even as cases soar.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“State media has not come up with a grand narrative to fully legitimize the sudden and radical change,” Chinese University of Hong Kong journalism professor Fang Kecheng (方可成) said.
“They were caught by surprise,” he added.
The “inconsistent messaging” indicated that the propaganda apparatus might lack adequate directives from the party on how to frame the situation, he said.
Some outlets have hinted that all is not well, with state news agency Xinhua and state broadcaster CCTV this week running reports urging people to use COVID-19 medicines “rationally” and highlighting government efforts to guarantee supply.
However, government-run publications have refrained from reporting the grimmer side of the exit, instead seeking to calm fears of the virus’ potency and depicting the policy shift as a logical, controlled and triumphant withdrawal.
“Looking back on the last three years, we have waged a stirring battle against the pandemic and gone through an arduous historical test,” read an editorial in the party-run People’s Daily last week.
China’s unrelentingly strict policy “demonstrated the superiority of China’s socialist system,” it said, adding that “optimizing” the policy now would help to adapt to new virus variants while “putting the lives and health of the people and masses first.”
There has also been a reluctance to address the mounting COVID-19 caseload.
A party-run newspaper on Friday cited an official estimate of 500,000 new cases daily in the eastern city of Qingdao. The story had been amended by yesterday to remove the figure.
While Xi’s recent flurry of diplomatic engagements has dominated the headlines, he has not yet commented publicly on the withdrawal of what was until recently a signature policy.
A similar sense of uncertainty has pervaded Chinese social media, where censors routinely erase politically sensitive content.
Several posts on the popular Sina Weibo platform purporting to describe COVID-related deaths appeared to have been censored by Friday afternoon, a review by journalists showed.
They included several blanked-out photos ostensibly taken at crematoriums, and a post from an account claiming to belong to the mother of a two-year-old girl who died after contracting the virus.
Posts about medicine shortages and instances of price gouging were also taken down, according to censorship monitor GreatFire.org.
Social media users have posted angry or sardonic comments in response to the perceived taboo around COVID-19 deaths.
Many rounded on a state-linked local news outlet after it reported that Wu Guanying (吳冠英) — designer of the mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympics — had died of a “severe cold” at the age of 67.
One commenter likened the phrasing to China’s dictatorial neighbor, North Korea, while another asked: “Is it illegal to say ‘COVID’ now?”
Yet other critical posts remained online as of Friday afternoon — including many that took the government to task for its perceived lack of an exit strategy.
“Did they really believe they could wipe out the virus with lockdowns?” one social media user said. “Three years, and they never made a contingency plan for when it couldn’t be controlled?”
Fang said that Chinese officials would “eventually find a way to frame everything as a victory.”
“The unique way of counting COVID-19 deaths is already providing a basis for that,” he added, referencing a new government definition of virus deaths that excludes many fatalities.
China yesterday officially recorded no new deaths from the virus, according to figures from the Chinese National Health Commission.
A Sina Weibo hashtag relating to how the country defines deaths from COVID-19 — counting only those who die from respiratory failure after testing positive — was censored.
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